Issue #1 released

First of all, I will echo darkie in saying that the first issue is simply experimental as of now. We didn't release the first issue expecting it to be perfect, just the best we could do with what we had.

in my mind i saw it more "magazine" styled. firstly i disliked the layout, specifically the home page where you had to choose where to go. of course, you choose the first option and then click next continuing on to the next article etc., but i found it irritating that you had to go back to click a new article that youve already passed.

i would have gone the route in which it looked more like a webpage layout where you had all your articles on the left and the articles on the right. although both present a problem, spacing, but i think the webpage layout would have worked better. back to spacing, i felt that there was just too much blank space. most of the instances came from when you used pictures, instead of working the text you just pasted it.

Click to expand...

We appreciate the input - we will definitely work on it. At this point, we were just concentrated in getting a basic layout out there, and we will definitely consider all of this for the second issue :)

As for the rest of the comments... we apologize that we couldn't meet your standards. However, please cut us some slack... I didn't feel as if I could just beat art of artists to use for the issue. I took a rather free "do an illustration if you felt like it" approach, and honestly it didn't work out too well. I will be more stringent in the future.

I don't feel criticism of a "mistake" on an article that is meant to be humorous is valid, and I wonder why you brought it up.

As for the lack of content... I agree. We definitely could have done more, but please understand that I didn't feel like I had the right to beat things out of people during the peak midterm/finals season.

All of the articles are extremely well written and it's an awesome read. Great job!

One thing that I can't shake, though, is that pretty much all of this stuff could have been normal on-site articles, except the Metagame Analyses and maybe the Q&A. Featured RMT could have been a link to a forum post in the News section, the articles could have all been new Smogon articles.

A focus on more time-oriented stuff, like the Metagame Analyses, as well as stuff like the Q&A with the other stuff secondary, or even just on site would make more sense. This way, you're including the more "magazine-centric" stuff, while not siphoning off articles that could be on the site in a potentially hard to find place. Then again, packaging it up as a magazine and having a strict deadline does mean more shit gets done in a more timely fashion, so the net result is likely more work being done. It just seems like it'll be confusing trying to find out where you read that article on DPP prediction in the future if it's not part of the main site.

I also agree with Atlas that the format isn't the best. I care a lot less about that though, as long as I can read it's fine. However, in my mind, it further emphasizes that this could be a collection of on site articles.

Anyhow, now that I actually have time to make my submissions not utter crap, are you guys looking for more writers? I already have an article or three in mind :D

Speaking of the "Magazine" layout style, I'm going to fire up InDesign tomorrow and see what I can do about turning this into a decent looking PDF. If it doesn't take too long, I might be able to do it for every issue.

Definitely liked the "an Introduction to prediction" and I agree with all of the points made there.

Information is everything when it comes to prediction.

Very good point here. At the start of the battle, and it should be noted that most players will play conservatively, having no prior knowledge of the opponents playstyle, and will in most cases make the safe move untill they gain more knowledge of the opponent. Which brings me to...

In other words, you shouldn't be predicting at this point.

I don't really understand this point, as I said (in my experience), most players will play conservatively at the start of the battle, often predicting at the start of the battle can have huge benefits, gaining the momentum at the start (with any styles of play) is often the key to winning.

Great job everyone :) just got the time to read it all properly and I must say the content is of a very high standard, just what we'd expect on Smogon.

I don't want to echo what Chris and Atlas said, but I kind of agree with them. Maybe we could just put some of the magazine articles on-site after a while, just so they're a little easier to find. The layout was a little disappointing, but obviously I'd expect it to get better with coming issues.

I really like it, but I love caelum's article the most on prediction, I agree with almost everything he said there :D (aside from hyper offensive teams needing to predict, that part was actually wrong).